Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language
    Unavailable
    The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language
    Unavailable
    The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language
    Ebook467 pages8 hours

    The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language

    By Melvyn Bragg

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Here is the riveting story of the English language, from its humble beginnings as a regional dialect to its current preeminence as the one global language, spoken by more than two billion people worldwide. In this groundbreaking book, Melvyn Bragg shows how English conquered the world. It is a magnificent adventure, full of jealousy, intrigue, and war—against a hoard of invaders, all armed with their own conquering languages, which bit by bit, the speakers of English absorbed and made their own.

    Along the way, its colorful story takes in a host of remarkable people, places, and events: the Norman invasion of England in 1066; the arrival of The Canterbury Tales and a “coarse” playwright named William Shakespeare, who added 2,000 words to the language; the songs of slaves; the words of Davy Crockett; and the Lewis and Clark expedition, which led to hundreds of new words as the explorers discovered unknown flora and fauna. The Adventure of English is an enthralling story not only of power, religion, and trade, but also of a people and how they changed the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcade Publishing
    Release dateApr 1, 2011
    ISBN9781628720242
    Unavailable
    The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language
    Author

    Melvyn Bragg

    Melvyn Bragg is a writer and broadcaster. His novels includeThe Hired Man, for which he won the Time/Life Silver Pen Award, Without a City Wall, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, The Soldier's Return, winner of the W H Smith Literary Award, A Son of War and Crossing the Lines, both of which were longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and most recently Grace and Mary and Now is the Time. He has also written several works of non-fiction, including The Book of Books, In Our Time, The Adventure of English and 12 Books that Changed the World. He lives in London and Cumbria.

    Read more from Melvyn Bragg

    Related to The Adventure of English

    Related ebooks

    Language Arts & Discipline For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The State Of It

      Sep 12, 2021

      The State Of It
      6 min read

    • Article

      The State Of It

      Sep 12, 2021

      The State Of It
      6 min read

    • Article

      Post-colonial Bad Jokes

      Mar 25, 2021

      Post-colonial Bad Jokes
      5 min read

    • Article

      Twists Of The Tongue

      Jun 29, 2023

      Graham Elliott writes on language and linguistics WRITING OF OUR PLANET, Rose Macaulay observed, “into every penetrable corner of it and into most of the impenetrable corners, the English will penetrate”. Rigorous in his survey of the previously pink

      3 min read

    • Article

      Word Histories Words, Words, Words

      Sep 1, 2021

      Word Histories Words, Words, Words
      1 min read

    • Article

      K’noath

      Dec 20, 2020

      K’noath
      4 min read

    • Article

      Food’s Greedy Appetite For Foreign Words

      Feb 9, 2022

      In the aviary of languages, English is a jackdaw or a magpie, a bird that steals widely and insouciantly. Grammarians call this readiness to pinch foreign words ‘borrowing’, but it’s not the kind encouraged by your bank. True, the purloining of words

      2 min read

    • Article

      Where Will Your Reading Take You?

      Aug 11, 2023

      Michael Hawkes & Susan Hawkes, with Stephen WunderliBorn to unmarried Irish parents in 1961 in London, author Michael Hawkes would become one of the tens of thousands of Irish babies to grow up denied the knowledge of and care of their birth families

      7 min read

    • Article

      Anglo-Saxon Extremists

      May 25, 2023

      AS AN UNDERGRADUATE, I TOOK a paper called “British political history, c.300-c.1100”. For ease of communication, we called it the “Anglo-Saxon paper” — which is all it ever was to me, aside from one week when I madly decided to write on the Picts. “W

      7 min read

    • Article

      “There’s Still This Hangover That Everything Has To Be Seen Through The Prism Of Enslavement”

      Sep 1, 2022

      African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History by Hakim Adi (Allen Lane, 688 pages, £30) Rhiannon Davies: Your new book covers African and Caribbean people in Britain from Roman times right up to the 21st century. Why did you decide to focus on s

      9 min read

    • Article

      Culture Chronicle

      Jul 4, 2021

      Culture Chronicle
      7 min read

    • Article

      SPOKEN Like A LOCAL

      Mar 1, 2024

      The Yorkshire Dialect Society was formed in 1897, out of the ashes of the Yorkshire committee of the English Dialect Society. The latter had decided to wind up after the culmination of work for the English Dialect Dictionary, which was edited by York

      2 min read

    • Article

      Speak Like A Georgian

      Nov 1, 2023

      Speak Like A Georgian
      3 min read

    • Article

      OED Sound System

      Sep 8, 2023

      The Tory xenophobes who police our coasts should watch their words. The so-called English language is actually a multicultural hubbub, jumbling together classical derivations, Anglo-Saxon roots, local dialect, fancy continental imports, and souvenirs

      2 min read

    • Article

      Writers & wordsmiths

      Feb 28, 2020

      Writers & wordsmiths
      3 min read

    • Article

      Speaking Out

      Sep 10, 2021

      Speaking Out
      4 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Mar 16, 2023

      Sam Willis's entertaining article about Charles Johnson's scandalous works popularising robbers, pirates and highwaymen (Murder and Mayhem in Georgian Britain, March) reignites a long controversy about the true identity of the author. Although the so

      4 min read

    • Article

      Who Can Tell Native Stories?

      Jul 11, 2023

      Who Can Tell Native Stories?
      7 min read

    • Article

      “England Was Seen As A Pariah State, Ruled By Regicidal Rebels Who’d Publicly Executed Their King”

      Sep 30, 2021

      ON THE HistoryExtra PODCAST Devil-Land: England Under Siege 1588-1688 by Clare Jackson (Allen Lane, 688 pages, £35) Ellie CawtHorne: Devil-Land looks at England from 1588 to 1688. Why do you think this is such a fascinating 100-year period of English

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Beauty Of LANGUAGE

      Feb 4, 2021

      What does a Jerusalem artichoke have to do with Jerusalem? Why do we fall head over heels when that’s the right way up? And doesn’t having your cake and eating it make total sense? If you’ve ever pondered any of these linguistic curiosities, the answ

      3 min read

    • Article

      Never Say Wolf

      Feb 13, 2020

      Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!” So says Count Dracula to the hapless Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker’s novel. Dracula is talking about the wolves howling in the valley below his castle in the Carpathian mountains. Thi

      6 min read

    • Article

      Books & co

      Sep 11, 2020

      back to school! Where will your reading take you this autumn? By Ian H Waller Subtitled ‘Unlocking the Mysteries of the Manor for Family Historians’, Introducing Manorial Records really does do this – making the intriguing, but perhaps daunting, topi

      5 min read

    • Article

      Fair Dinkum Dictionary

      Mar 25, 2021

      Fair Dinkum Dictionary
      4 min read

    Reviews for The Adventure of English

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words